‘Writing is stupid – this Sunday I will kiss you on the lips.’ ~Telegram from Albert Einstein to his wife

‘So, Sunday=kiss x time squared?’ ~ Florian Illies

From Mediaeval Chansons to Tchaikowsky’s ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ from Mozart’s operas to Gershwin’s ‘Porgy and Bess,’ and from Puccini’s ‘La Boheme’ to Cole Porter’s ‘What is this thing called love?,’ the power and mystery of love has been the prime source of some of the greatest music ever written. But as the Roaring Twenties dies down, Europe is entereing the 1930’s, an increasing time of fight – or flight – as the world staggers from one global conflict to another. Michael Lankester weaves together these two seemingly unconnected worlds by focusing on Paris and Berlin and the turbulent lives of such luminaries as Ernest Hemmingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, Charlie Chaplin and Lee Miller, Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, Salvador Dali and Gala, and Picasso and Marie Therese Walter.